1.22 rc1 - Tailor feels more arbitrary than ever

[ifoz]

Just thought I'd make a discussion about this and ways that it could be changed, because to me tailor in 1.22 feels even more arbitrary than before.
Quite a few new clothes have been added, some crafted by anyone and some being locked behind the tailor. The strange part is that there are three new winter sets you can craft (arctic hunter, arctic fisher, embroidered fur) which all share identical stats, aside from arctic hunter being crafted by anyone and the other two being tailor-locked. All three feature embroidered/decorated parts, and to me at least it just makes tailor feel even more like a strange restriction.
Why can my Seraph make one pair of fancy fur boots, but is completely locked out of another similarly fancy pair without being a tailor?

I think one way this could be remedied if anyone could make any clothing that is usually gated behind tailor, but needed to spend more resources and acquire a sewing kit from traders. That way the tailor is more resource/cost efficient, but there's no arbitrary locks on random items.

Let me know what you think though, and if you have your own thoughts about this! 

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, ifoz said:

Why can my Seraph make one pair of fancy fur boots, but is completely locked out of another similarly fancy pair without being a tailor?

Maybe it's a case of: Anyone can do it once, but it takes knowledge and skill to repeat the endeavor with a consistently good outcome.

 

3 minutes ago, ifoz said:

I think one way this could be remedied if anyone could make any clothing that is usually gated behind tailor, but needed to spend more resources and acquire a sewing kit from traders. That way the tailor is more resource/cost efficient, but there's no arbitrary locks on random items.

At a glance it seems like it would be okay, but I think that it might overall make Tailor more unattractive than it already is. The reason I say that is that in the case of singleplayer, class-exclusives aren't a big deal since the player can just turn off the class-exclusive recipes and craft whatever they would like. In multiplayer, having fancy class-exclusive clothes and access to the best clothing repair is what helps give Tailor a niche, since class-exclusive recipes are more likely to be enabled in multiplayer for encouraging more cooperative play. That way, everyone can stay clothed, but if they want to look their best they'll want to visit their friendly neighborhood tailor.

However, if anyone could craft the clothes if they buy a sewing kit, then sewing kits are all the Tailor will be able to really trade. And it would likely have to be rather cheap at that, given that NPC traders sell sewing kits for a rather cheap price. 

From a logic standpoint though, the problem I see here is that the fancier clothes should take a lot of special skill to craft--skills that only a Tailor is going to have. It's pretty hard to picture a class like Blackguard, which is distinctly described as being unsuited for delicate work, doing any kind of embroidery or sewing any kind of simple form-fitting outfit, let alone something really fancy.

[ifoz]

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

At a glance it seems like it would be okay, but I think that it might overall make Tailor more unattractive than it already is. The reason I say that is that in the case of singleplayer, class-exclusives aren't a big deal since the player can just turn off the class-exclusive recipes and craft whatever they would like. In multiplayer, having fancy class-exclusive clothes and access to the best clothing repair is what helps give Tailor a niche, since class-exclusive recipes are more likely to be enabled in multiplayer for encouraging more cooperative play. That way, everyone can stay clothed, but if they want to look their best they'll want to visit their friendly neighborhood tailor.

Yeah, I get that. You're right, it's just tricky to think of a way to balance tailor that makes sense when some fancy clothes can be crafted by any class - I think really the root problem is that tailor is the only "job" class, entirely focused on exclusive items rather than actual gameplay, but that would be hard to remedy without a proper weaving system or a total tailor rebalance, which seems a bit extreme.

Another option would be gating some of the fancier options available for everyone behind tailor, but that just gives most players less choice overall and isn't really fun in any regard.

Something else interesting is that tailor is slowly losing the one gameplay aspect they used to have - making warmer clothes than everyone else. They already lost most of that when Nadiyan fur was introduced in 1.20, though that was latergame story-gated. Now though with the arctic hunter set and some of the warmth values on the new clothes, tailor really only makes extra cosmetic choices rather than especially warm clothes.

(Some of the new clothes feel like they need a balance look-over, the rawhide tunic is very cheap to craft but is one of the second warmest shirt slot items in the game, at +3 degrees. The fur-lined vest is another +3 degree item, but it goes in the shirt slot instead of the coat slot like you'd expect. I hope they move it there, since then it could be a fur coat alternative with identical stats, and would allow players to wear a shirt underneath it).

EDIT: I will say though, I am very glad that all classes have the arctic hunter set. It feels to me like it rounds out winter progression a bit more, since it's a very warm set you can craft with rare materials (cinnebar) that offers an alternative to Nadiyan fur.

Edited Sunday at 10:05 AM by ifoz

[MKMoose]

7 hours ago, ifoz said:

I think one way this could be remedied if anyone could make any clothing that is usually gated behind tailor, but needed to spend more resources and acquire a sewing kit from traders. That way the tailor is more resource/cost efficient, but there's no arbitrary locks on random items.

My thought has been that the tailor should focus a lot more on trading, and all clothing outside of certain basics should be tailor-exclusive in crafting but usually purchasable from the clothing trader and perhaps other traders like luxuries and survival in certain cases (ideally alongside a change to make them sell all items from several clothing sets at once instead of completely random items). Requiring a purchased sewing kit for some clothing and making sure that they require some rarer resources also seems like a pretty reasonable idea, though I don't think there should be two different-cost recipes for the same clothes, unless it's only implemented through some sort of intermediate item that the tailor could craft more efficiently (which may also help with every other recipe that uses hides being craftable with hundreds of possible item combinations that make it kinda annoying to look them up).

Then maybe add a special system where different NPCs (primarily traders, but maybe Nadiyans as well) would "request" some clothes (frequently tailor-exclusive) and pay handsomely for them (they currently do buy some clothes, but it's inconsistent, has little variety and is mostly limited to lootable clothes), so that a tailor would effectively switch the balance around by being a trader themselves. Other classes would buy clothing from a merchant, whereas the tailor could actively go around and sell clothing for a hefty profit. A similar system could be extended to other materials to go in line with Tyron's idea that he shared a while back to make a merchant an actually gameplay-viable player job of sorts.

 

6 hours ago, ifoz said:

(Some of the new clothes feel like they need a balance look-over, the rawhide tunic is very cheap to craft but is one of the second warmest shirt slot items in the game, at +3 degrees. The fur-lined vest is another +3 degree item, but it goes in the shirt slot instead of the coat slot like you'd expect. I hope they move it there, since then it could be a fur coat alternative with identical stats, and would allow players to wear a shirt underneath it).

There's also a whole number of clothes for which the tailor kind of provides no advantage besides being potentially cheaper (e.g. all items except shoes in the arctic fisher and embroidered fur sets compared to the arctic hunter set), which further begs the question of "what's the point of the tailor?". Also, the reindeer herder clothes have some of the most arbitrary warmth values in the game, it feels like, and I think different sets should be unified to make them mostly equivalent to each other instead of making a patchwork from different sets the technically optimal set for warmth.

With the new buff system, I think it may be really good to allow the tailor to add lining to most clothes, making them ~0.5 C warmer and reducing the need to specifically balance the tailor's clothes against other sets. This would make the tailor's advantage independent of the specific clothes that they can craft, and allow to keep different sets consistent with each other, leaving the choice of clothing more to the matter of taste.

Edited Sunday at 10:17 AM by MKMoose

[ifoz]

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Also, the reindeer herder clothes have some of the most arbitrary warmth values in the game, it feels like, and I think different sets should be unified to make them mostly equivalent to each other instead of making a patchwork from different sets the technically optimal set for warmth.

The 1.22 warmth values are kind of all over the place right now in terms of balancing - the rawhide tunic for example is a whopping +3 degrees in the shirt slot (better than Nadiyan fur) while also being very cheap to craft earlygame.
(I know I mentioned both this and the fur vest earlier, but they both stand out to me the most. The fur vest really should be an upperbodyover / coat slot item instead of a shirt, as all other vests in the game can be worn over the top of a shirt like you'd expect).

It's interesting to me that the tailor's new embroidered fur / arctic fisher boots aren't as good as reindeer herder shoes, I suppose that's because the shoes need cinnabar. Still, the whole cinnabar thing is a bit arbitrary in itself, considering red dye was not an uncommon luxury in the irl middle ages.

Edited Sunday at 01:00 PM by ifoz

[LadyWYT]

Could also perhaps let Tailor start with clothing in better condition, as well as let their clothing take longer to degrade than other classes. The former isn't terribly useful on the Standard temperate start, however, it does give some interesting niche on colder worlds or worlds where the player's temperature tolerance has been changed to something higher than 0C. As for the latter, the sewing kit already allows Tailor to repair a bit more efficiently, however, it stands to reason that they'd be very good about not tearing up their clothes to begin with. That could also be the reason they're less effective at harvesting--it's not just a lack of skill, they're being extremely careful so they don't get all dirty!

[ifoz]

Just another odd balance thing, has anyone else taken a look at the grass shirt and grass pants?
They're both +2 warmth each and only require a handful of dry grass to craft, which means they outclass the majority of clothing in the game through virtue of being decently warm and extremely inexpensive. I feel like if they were reduced to +1 each or +1.5, that would fit a lot better into the balance. 
Otherwise I can see a large amount of players only ever bothering to remake endless grass clothes every winter, not even bothering with rawhide, the previous cheapest option.

[LadyWYT]

34 minutes ago, ifoz said:

Just another odd balance thing, has anyone else taken a look at the grass shirt and grass pants?
They're both +2 warmth each and only require a handful of dry grass to craft, which means they outclass the majority of clothing in the game through virtue of being decently warm and extremely inexpensive. I feel like if they were reduced to +1 each or +1.5, that would fit a lot better into the balance. 
Otherwise I can see a large amount of players only ever bothering to remake endless grass clothes every winter, not even bothering with rawhide, the previous cheapest option.

That does seem a bit strange. The closest I've bothered looking was enough to figure out that the shirt recipe overrides the haybale recipe.

While I'm sure that dry grass is better than nothing, it seems like it should have a lower insulating factor than even +1. Or at least, a propensity to wear out incredibly fast as well as combust. Better not wear it near the forges or pit kilns!

[ifoz]

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

While I'm sure that dry grass is better than nothing, it seems like it should have a lower insulating factor than even +1. Or at least, a propensity to wear out incredibly fast as well as combust. Better not wear it near the forges or pit kilns!

Honestly I think dry grass clothes could be better put to use as rain protection. Have the shirt worn in the coat slot, and provide some level of rain protection with the tradeoff of not being very warm. Dried grass raincoats were a real historical thing, after all!

[space llama]

i think classes need more to separate them in general to be honest, the bonuses they get are nice but still lacks proper impact in my opinion. 

if they could make twine easier or with other resources as well that would be interesting, but i think that would need to come with an overhaul on how we do crafting of that sort in general, for now classes feel more like a prof of concept rather then something stable 

[kal_culated]

Class balance in general seems a little, odd. Tailor is definitely one of the odder ones. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 3/7/2026 at 8:30 PM, ifoz said:

Why can my Seraph make one pair of fancy fur boots, but is completely locked out of another similarly fancy pair without being a tailor?

IMO, if you want anything beyond rawhide clothing and the shirt you were born in, you will need to be a tailor. They aren't necessary, but in a mulitiplayer setting I can see the base mom rolling tailor and everyone coming to them for clothes, resources, etc. while they go out gathering stuff and dumping it for them to sort later.

[ifoz]

1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

IMO, if you want anything beyond rawhide clothing and the shirt you were born in, you will need to be a tailor. They aren't necessary, but in a mulitiplayer setting I can see the base mom rolling tailor and everyone coming to them for clothes, resources, etc. while they go out gathering stuff and dumping it for them to sort later.

In my eyes I think this mightn't be the best idea, since for it to actually work like this you'd need to remove clothing repair from everyone except tailor.
Clothing repair is already something tailor as a 25% efficiency bonus to, and taking that ability away from everyone else would make a big incentive for ruin hunting and trading lategame (finding/buying unique clothing) basically useless if those clothes couldn't be repaired.

Story locations and ruins would become less interesting since clothing is a big part of their loot, and things like Nadiyan fur would be a painful gear sink to maintain - you'd have to spend around 100 gears per set each time it degraded to buy an entirely new one.

The only way I could see removing repair being an okay design choice would be if clothing traders and the Nadiyan tailor could repair clothes for you at a cost, but that's just less convenient, impossible for Homo Sapiens players and less interesting than having to ration out linen sheets for the repairs yourself.

The current repair system is fine in my eyes considering that non-tailor Seraphs know how to make things like windmill sails, boat sails, and basic gambeson. It makes sense that they could use those basic sewing skills to fix up clothing, but not make entirely new clothes aside from a handful of basic/survival-oriented things like the homespun set, rawhide set, fur set, fur-lined vest and arctic hunter set, among a couple others any class can craft.

Edited 31 minutes ago by ifoz